Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Mark Teixeira wants baseball to rid itself of its PED problem, and he has a very personal reason for it.

“I don’t ever want a kid to look at me and say, ‘Oh, he just hit three homers in a game, he’s probably on steroids,” the Yankees first baseman said on Wednesday. “That’s why we have to be vigilant about making sure that every single option is exhausted to make the public, the fans, the players are all comfortable that we’re doing everything we can.”

...“I think we’ve tried to do everything we can to clean up the game, and we’ve done a good job of cleaning it up,” he said. “But there’s always going to be outliers, there’s always going to be cases where guys either intentionally or unintentionally break the rules. If there’s anything that we can do to make it more of a deterrent or to make the testing better, I am all for going through that process.”

...Teixeira said he sees progress from baseball’s testing program.

“I’ve been a 30-home run, 100-RBI guy my entire career, and there were times early in my career guys were hitting 60 and 140,” he said. “I think those days are over, and that’s good. Guys aren’t hitting 60 or 70 home runs anymore. In that case people can look at it and say, OK, we’re back to a more normal time period. The days of guys being twice the size they should be and hitting 60 homers a year, I think those days are over.”

But, he added, “That’s not to say there aren’t people still trying to cheat. It’s been part of baseball for a long time and it’s not going to go away, but we just have to be sure that we’re doing everything we possibly can.”

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